Jerry Amernic: Egerton Ryerson’s name is still in the mud

I recently took a walk around Victoria University on the University of Toronto campus with the school’s communications officer. She was going to show me the portrait of Egerton Ryerson, who was involved in founding the original Victoria College, which was later absorbed into the U of T. But we couldn’t find it.

It was somewhere in the E.J. Pratt Library, but two staffers we asked had no idea where. Eventually we discovered it on the wall at the end of a hallway. In the portrait, Ryerson is 39, the age at which he became principal of Victoria College. The portrait used to be in the foyer outside the principal’s office, but according to the sign next to it, it was taken down in 2021 for “security reasons” and later put up in the library.

Today, if you visit the school’s website and click on “History,” you won’t see any mention of Ryerson, despite his involvement in its founding. He’s better known for the connection to Ryerson University, now Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).

Alas, his name was attached to that institution for 74 years and his statue stood there for 134 years before being toppled and beheaded by a mob on June 6, 2021. That was two weeks after the announcement of 215 graves of missing and murdered Indigenous children said to be found on the grounds of the former Indian residential school in Kamloops, B.C. In the five years since, not one grave has been confirmed.

Ryerson’s statue was targeted because he was labelled an architect of Indian residential schools. Ryerson is still paying the price.

He should be remembered for the huge mark he left on educational and cultural institutions. It’s no stretch to call him the father of public education in Canada.

In 1829, Ryerson became the founding editor of a newspaper called the Christian Guardian, and from his post, he established the publishing house later known as Ryerson Press, before it was sold to an American publisher.

In 1844, Ryerson was appointed chief superintendent of education for Upper Canada and set out to study educational programs in England, Europe and the United States. What constituted education here wasn’t close to what was happening in those jurisdictions; only half of our school-age children were even attending school. In 1846, Ryerson proposed reforms calling for improved teacher-student ratios, school management, teacher training and textbooks written by and for Canadians.

He wanted to make education a universal right.

The next year he founded the Toronto Normal School, which became the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. What’s more, the Ontario Agricultural College at the University of Guelph and the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto had their roots at that institution.

His trips abroad led to early collections of items that would evolve into museums and galleries, among them the Royal Ontario Museum.

Education. Culture. Publishing. The man was a pioneer in all these areas.

The “controversy” with Ryerson, who was widely considered progressive for his time, comes from a letter he wrote in 1847, in which he was asked for his thoughts on setting up training schools to educate Indigenous youth.

The letter suggested a model of voluntary schooling for students to learn how to use farming tools and equipment. The focus would be on agriculture. But that letter has since been taken out of context by activists determined to sully his name and label him the creator of Indian residential schools.

The campaign against Ryerson at Victoria University began in 2019, when it commissioned a report, which ultimately recommended that, “Ryerson’s name should no longer be used honorifically at Victoria University.” That resulted in the Ryerson House residence reverting back to its original name, First House.

Two months after his statue was torn down and beheaded at Ryerson University, the school’s “Standing Strong Task Force,” which was set up to investigate Ryerson’s legacy, issued a report making claims against him. Among them was that he was involved in setting up Indian residential schools and enabling separate schools for Black students. All this happened during the frenzy over the story about the graves at Kamloops.

In 2022, the university was renamed Toronto Metropolitan University as the man and his name became toxic, and has remained so, especially in the academic community. The residue persists at Victoria University to this day.

A number of prominent historians have criticized the campaign against Ryerson. Patrice Dutil, who still teaches at TMU, and Ronald Stagg, former head of history at the university, defended the man in the Dorchester Review in 2021.

“The movement against Ryerson belongs to a wider trend to indulge in rage against ‘white men’ who dominated Canada’s history,” they wrote. “But this case is special because Egerton Ryerson is patently innocent of the charges.”

When I interviewed Stagg for my book “SLEEPWOKING,” he said he was “horrified” when the statue of Ryerson came down and that all the talk about early residential schools being centres of assimilation, mandatory attendance and forced conversion to Christianity is “nonsense.” He said these early schools weren’t like the later federal government ones.

Another critic I interviewed is Lynn McDonald, former NDP member of Parliament, professor emerita at the University of Guelph and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She and Stagg co-founded a group called the Friends of Egerton Ryerson, in an attempt to clear his name after the turmoil about Ryerson went into high gear.

With regards to his treatment at the U of T’s Victoria University, McDonald and Stagg say the administration there has been remiss. Rhonda McEwen, the outgoing president of the school, was recently announced as the next president of the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

This prompted an interview with Steve Paikin, which was published in the Toronto Star last month. Paikin asked about the “controversy” involving Ryerson during her tenure. She mentioned the committee set up to study the matter and said the fullest story must be told — “the good, the bad and the ugly.” Only there is no “ugly” with Ryerson. None. And so, I asked her myself.

“We returned the portraits to campus while encouraging and supporting ongoing dialogue, research and critical engagement. This was the opposite of cancellation. The role of a university is to discover, investigate and disseminate knowledge; to foster learning and critical analysis rather than respond primarily to populist reactions,” McEwen wrote in an email to me on July 20.

Nevertheless, under McEwen’s predecessor, Victoria University issued two reports that refer to Ryerson’s “troubling legacy,” his support of segregated schools for Black students, that he “enabled a discriminatory model of education that caused real harm to Indigenous students and their communities” and that he played “an important role in the development of the residential school system.”

McDonald says McEwen is leaving her post without properly addressing what McDonald calls “the egregious errors and accusations” about Ryerson that were made during the tenure of her predecessor, William Robins, who commissioned both reports. In June, he was named interim president and vice-chancellor of Victoria University at U of T.

As for Stagg, a graduate of Victoria College himself, he met with McEwen a year and a half ago to persuade the college to change its tune about Ryerson. “The report got it wrong and she said she’d look into it,” said Stagg. “She didn’t.”

If you want to see the portrait at U of T’s Victoria University, find the library and go to the end of the hall. It hangs there unceremoniously.

National Post

Jerry Amernic is the author of “Sleepwoking,” a book about historical revisionism in Canada and all the fallout associated with it.